I'm in the market... My family is 'thinking' of buying a new home. And while I spend a lot of time with other buyers, it is a different beast when putting MY money on the line. It shouldn't be... but it is. I think it is a fantastic learning opportunity for me. So, this is a series of posts about the things I am 'unlearning' as a real estate professional, and learning from the buyer's seat.

Dear Listing Agent,

Please don't put stupid things in your description. There are a limited number of characters allowed by the listing services. Using that valuable space describing the property and why we should consider buying it would be a 'highest and best use'. Using it to say...

"As is, where is" (Gee, I thought they would move and renovate the house for that money)

"Show and Sell" (Generally, as an agent, those are two of my job duties)

"Mrs. Clean lives here" (Will I have to evict her?)

"Won't last long" (please note the winter grass in the picture... it has already 'lasted long')

"Location, Location, Location" (Yes, the house has a location... does it have three?)

"Check out the seller's beautiful Golden Shower" (ok, that one is just WAY too much info for me)

I can think of a LOT of information that would be more relevent than the wasters of space listed above. Maybe mentioning some of the highlights about the house or neighborhood would be a good use of the space...

I'm not going to get into the repeated pictures of the same space, and missing pictures of the things I want to know about... like the garage. We have 20 slots for pics... why use 3 of them for almost the same angle of the front of the house and three more for almost the same angle of the master bedroom? Unless there is a way for me to meld those into a 3D image, I don't get it. So, maybe using the four wasted pictures to show me the garage, tiled backsplash in the kitchen, the sunroom and the landscaped backyard would be better... after all, you mentioned them in the description.

The first step is to start looking at your listings as if you were going to buy them...